A story of lives and histories enmeshed with those of plants and trees, of bravery, secrets, difference, love.

Lovely plants….

Heartsease.….used in early times to ease heartache and suffering.

The flowers are edible..I float them on the top of my home-made salad dressings.

I lightly press some heartsease flowers into the dough just before I put bread into the oven to bake.

I put a couple of heartsease on the tops of lemon-cream cheese iced cupcakes. So pretty!

Purple Honeysuckle….folk-lore says that the twining flowers of honeysuckle represent loyalty in a friendship – or loveship.

My purple honeysuckle anticipates being planted and waits patiently in its pot. It’s already flowered once with pinkish beginnings , almost purple if you have an imagination which certainly I do, and deep gold flowers. It’s underplanted with sweet purple and white alyssum and new seedlings. The tag showed petunias in pink, purple and white profusion. I enjoy the mystery of petunias, that so often both the colours and scent of this plant friend surpass my imaginings of them..as do many of my human friends, in fact…

creamy yellow flowers, fragrance like ripe bananas. Perfect for us, as we are banana starved here in Queensland at present.

How lovely to discover…

Lovage growing in my potted garden. I had planted lovage after discovering some on a market trip with dear friend Effie, and frankly it had not thrived.

So I forgot about it, then was amazed to find it growing beautifully. I delicately trimmed some leaves, with thanks to the plant, and whipped up a little

LOVAGE OMELETTE

I mixed together: 2 eggs, 1 inch thick slice madhusudan paneer ( I love the sound of that, that’s why I buy it from my local Spice Shop) diced small, 1 tspn whole grain mustard, salt (not too much, My lovely Daughter says I may eat too much salt, I told her gardeners sweat so they need salt, but she may be right. She often is, and thanks to her this blog looks good again. Sorry for the delay, technology was getting the better of me. You might like to detour over to her latest post, appreciation of delicious @nonsense funnel for some dreams of loveliness), lovage, a tiny bit of marjoram, and lots of pepper.

I cooked in a small frypan oiled with Olys, a new one I bought, made from wheat germ, rice bran, blackcurrant, walnut oils.

It was delicious eaten in a leisurely manner reading ‘What I Talk About When I talk About Running.’ Haruki Murakamis running memoir, a book about how he became a writer in the same way he became a runner. I am enjoying this, and I quite definitely don’t enjoy running, but will think on this idea when on my morning walks for a while and see what I come up with…

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